“You mean Splitface?”
“That’s not what a good Mormon says. His name’s Manolo. I’m just saying, why look for trouble?”
“You’re afraid. That’s it. It’s just dumb luck you got those fellows.”
Rulon put a halter on the horse and led him to the barn. Obadiah followed. Both boys brushed the horse.
“Not my fault I was here that day and not you. I wish you got the praise and attention. I hate it.”
“No, you’re the hero, Rulon.”
They finished brushing the horse and spread fresh hay.
“Come on into the house. We got a long ride tomorrow.”
“After I check the stock.”
“Ain’t you the good farmer too. Please yourself.”
Obadiah left the barn. Rulon went out back to the pigsties and stock corrals. He climbed a corral fence and whistled.
“Hey, Manolo. You awake?”
“Yeah. That you, kid?”
“Yes, it’s Rulon.”
There was a clink of chains. A shadowy figure got to his feet and shuffled over, hands and feet shackled. Darkness mercifully shielded his disfigured features, the curled, blackened ruins of a shattered nose and the open, smashed-teeth grimace of a caved-in upper jaw, torn open by Grandfather Moroni’s hoe.
“You know, only you say my name. Got tobacco, kid?” His mangled, breathy voice was unintelligible except after long listening. “Homebrew a Jack Mormon cousin made?”
“Allreds don’t do that. I got some rock candy from the Salt you can have.”
“Sure, kid.”
Rulon fished rock candy from a vest pocket and handed it to Splitface. The slave loudly sucked on the candy.
“Thanks, dog. Your padre don’t feed me much, specially nothing sweet.”
“Pa said tonight at convocation he’s going to lead an expedition with you scouting. Parley and Nephi are coming here first thing sunrise.”
“No surprise. All he says when he ain’t beating me.”
“Pa said you claimed there’s a ranch your crew had near the Albikerk full of stolen cattle. That true?”
“Sure, kid. Sweet hideout in a box canyon. Got spring water and rustled stock.”
“I hope so, Manolo. I don’t want to shoot you like I did your brother.”
Splitface chuckled, a death rattle rasp.
“No fear. I ain’t go tell you wrong. Nobody mess with Kid Allred.”
Rulon scowled. “We got to get up early. You need a blanket?”
“No. Used to the dirt by now. See you, kid.”
Nephi and Parley rode into the barnyard before sunup, each man on his best mount with two spares trailing behind as instructed. Older than Hyrum at forty, worn and wrinkled by hard toil outdoors, Nephi was small, fox-faced, with brown teeth. Parley was another big Allred with flaming hair and a freckle-jammed face, the clan’s blacksmith and farrier. He brought a hand-forged, single-barreled shotgun. Nephi carried a century-old Ruger MK III hunting rifle he’d bought at the Salt for an impoverishing sum. Hyrum waited in his shirtsleeves, thumbs in his galluses.
“Howdy. Nauvoo’s got tea with strawberry jam.”
“Now, that is thoughtful,” Parley said. He hopped off his horse.
Nauvoo came out of the house with three steaming clay mugs of Mormon tea. The men drank deep of the sharp, sweet, hot tea.
“I’m glad to see you, Cousin Parley. Cousin Nephi,” Nauvoo said.
Rulon and Obadiah emerged. Obadiah already dressed with his hair combed. Rulon stretching and yawning, still half asleep.
“Glad you boys decided to join the men. Ob, get the string lined up and see to our mounts. Rulon, get the cobwebs out of your head. You and Splitface get the pack mules loaded and ready.”
Hectored by Hyrum, they left soon after. Rulon rode a dirty white gelding, a strong mount with an unfortunate tendency to booger. He carried Enos Allred’s AK-47, the same weapon he killed five Gentiles with, tacitly understood to be his alone now. Obadiah rode a sorrel mare and was armed with the Springfield rifle that belonged to one of the men Rulon killed. Hyrum rode the big roan stallion only he could handle, armed with his hunting shotgun and a Colt .45, another trophy from his son’s killing spree.
They headed down a dirt path and came to the marker for the trail to the Salt, a huge, crumbling concrete pillar. The expedition rode for two days down the path that paralleled old Highway 15, well outlined by hoof prints and cart tracks. Rulon had never been this far and was fascinated by the highway’s jumbled remains. Long, weed-choked stretches of asphalt were churned and cracked into an impassable shambles. The arid landscape was dotted with burnt, giant hilltop mansions and frequent ancient, wrecked cars, tires long ago stripped off, glass senselessly smashed.
“Kinda spooky, ain’t it,” Obadiah said, “Sure you don’t want to stay home with Ma?”
“Ob, hush up and tend the mules. Rulon, pay him no mind.” The edge in Hyrum’s voice made it clear he wasn’t in the mood to listen to heckling or verbal sparring.
They traveled the sixty-some miles to the Salt in two days. The only sizable settlement for hundreds of miles in any direction, the once large and prosperous city was reduced to three hundred souls. Salters literally scraped a living from the heap of coarse brown salt that marked the spot where legend said a lake once stood, using it to cure hides and jerk meat.
Shacks and rusted mobile homes clustered near the salt heap, outside the ruined city, dominated by the enormous temple’s gutted hulk, the giant, discolored husk of a once-splendid edifice, like the corpse of the Fat Times itself. The Salt was the place to buy manufactured arms and ammunition, to recharge batteries, to get canned goods, and (quietly and secretly) alcohol and other vices through Jack Mormons. Hyrum sprang for a night at the one hotel, a ramshackle affair of several Winnebagos in a row, with solar-powered lights, clean sheets, and running water, the lap of luxury to Rulon.
They emerged from their motor home suite in the predawn morning, ready for a day’s hard riding, but Obadiah found Splitface unconscious in a horse stall in the livery stables where Hyrum had shackled him for the night, plainly sodden from alcohol. He snored loudly through the black, crinkled gap that was his ruined nose and mouth.
“Oh my freaking heck,” Hyrum said.
“Mind your language, cousin,” Nephi said.
“Don’t lecture me. Help me get him on his horse.”
Nephi and Hyrum slung Splitface onto his horse and tied his hands to the saddle horn. He spent the day in a daze, nodding in and out of sleep, but somehow stayed on. They rode south along Highway 15, the mules heavily loaded with provisions and bulging water skins.
“Who gave Splitface liquor?” Hyrum said.
“Probably a Jack Mormon, Pa,” Obadiah said.
“Yes, but why? Splitface got nothing.”
“He’s good at talking, Pa. He talks folks into doing things by acting nice.”
“Keep quiet, Rulon. See to the mules.”
Perpetual drought had stripped already austere terrain down to bare rock and parched earth. The Allreds rode through a near-lifeless landscape, red plains bare of trees or grass, topsoil stripped away long ago by a punishing wind. Occasionally they passed battered relics of the Fat Times, roofless U-Totems, looted, razed strip malls, and flyspeck towns whose residents had picked up stakes and fled generations before. Hyrum passed without a glance.
“Any stores got took a long time ago. Only good for rats.”
In the late afternoon, when the heat peaked, they made camp in an old Arctic Circle restaurant. They penned the stock in the gutted building and slept outside on bedrolls. Rulon shot a brace of rats with Nephi’s hunting rifle. Parley carefully skinned and gutted them. Splitface built a fire and Parley roasted the rats on spits.
“These old buildings are still good for firewood,” Parley said.
“That was tasty, Cousin Parley.” Hyrum licked grease from his fingers.
“Hyrum, I want to know,” Nephi said. “You want more ou
t of this than stock?”
“What do you mean, cousin?”
Nephi licked his lips and grinned. “Women. Splitface claims the crew had squaws waiting. Ain’t that right, Splitface?”
“Sure, jefe.” Splitface took a sliver of rat meat Rulon had given him and carefully put it into his ruined mouth. “Three, maybe four young chicas.”
“So besides new stock, you want new blood for the Allred clan.”
Rulon grimaced at the open lust on Nephi’s face. He was notorious. The only unmarried adult male Allred, his first and only wife having died years before. The Elders refused to let him remarry for some mysterious reason, whispered about among adults when they thought children weren’t around.
“That’s no fit way to talk, Nephi. Everybody sleep except Obadiah. You keep the first watch and then Parley.”
Several weeks passed of wearying travel. They rode early in the morning and late into the evening with a long afternoon siesta to avoid the worst of the heat, down narrow, winding canyons and up sharp, ridge-backed mountains, through an eternal, unchanging stone landscape devoid of humanity. Rations were quickly eaten. Men and stock grew lean from much toil and little food. Mules and especially horses consumed hay and oats at an alarming rate.
“We got enough to last, Pa?”
“You fret like Nauvoo, Rulon. We’ll be fine when we reach the Colorado.”
Hyrum proved right. After another long, punishing day, they descended another seemingly endless series of switchbacks to another narrow draw. Long shadows hinted twilight would soon come. They could look forward to another cold camp without water or fire.
“I see something,” Obadiah cried.
There was a glint at the valley’s bottom, the gleam that only came when sunlight reflects off water. The men lashed their mounts forward, eager to slake their thirst.
“Easy,” Hyrum said. “Don’t want a man thrown or a horse with a broken leg.”
At the valley bottom lay a winding creek, what remained of the once mighty Colorado, freed of mankind’s trammels, but shrunken by drought to a fragile, frequently interrupted rivulet. Steep cliffs were striped by great, discolored stone bands that marked former waterlines. The thin stream was nonetheless a godsend to the weary travelers and their stock. They loose-hobbled their mounts and made a rope corral for the mules. Hyrum got on his knees to give thanks. The others followed his example.
“Heavenly Father. Thank you for this day, and for the water you led us to, and the grass for the stock, and our many other blessings. Please bless me that I will have all the things I’m searching for on this expedition. Bless my wife and children and Parley and Nephi. We ask these things in the name of Thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”
“Amen,” everyone else said, even Splitface.
They passed two days by the creek. Hyrum allowed them to sleep and rest, but insisted they also hunt game and gather forage for the stock. Obadiah cut long tobosa grass with a sickle while Rulon bundled and packed it. Parley smoked squirrels and doves by a fire. Rulon was sad to leave the rare verdant spot, but Hyrum insisted.
After six more days, they reached the Four Corners Monument. The parking lot was cracked asphalt, the museum and Navajo craft shacks carried away by wind long ago. The only remnant besides the parking lot was a bronze disc set in a concrete platform that marked the sharp, arbitrarily drawn corners of four extinct states.
Hyrum pointed to the direction marker for New Mexico.
“We’re in your territory now, Splitface, Lead us to that ranch. Take us straight or you’ll die in a gully.”
“Sure, jefe.” Splitface’s open grin made his gaping orifice even more hideous. “We get there soon.”
Yet they traveled on for days without sight of even a jackrabbit or a desert rat, much less a well-watered, well-stocked ranch. Often they walked to spare the mounts, down narrow canyons and past jutting mesas with nothing to see but an occasional horned toad. Even avoiding the worst of it, midday heat still crushed them like a vise while dust choked their mouths. Bone weary after each long day’s trek, the arduous journey took its toll on men and stock. Once again, they grew rib-sticking lean and supplies steadily dwindled.
Splitface’s cheery optimism never ceased. Always ready to help with any chore, he was first to rise and the last to seek rest at camp after tending the stock. He continually pointed to the crest of the next ridge.
“Not far now, jefe. Just one big hill and we real close.”
Never known for patience, Hyrum grew angry. Things came to a head one night after a mule broke a leg on the trail and had to be shot. Parley sawed off a haunch to roast later on. The rest was left for carrion. They made camp in a motel courtyard. Hyrum told Splitface to get wood and make a fire. The slave broke some boards off the side of a ruined cottage with an ax. He was about to bust them into kindling when Hyrum hit him on the side of the head with a two-by-four. Splitface slumped bonelessly to the dirt. Hyrum stood over him, brandishing the plank.
“Don’t like a wild goose chase, Splitface. Just a taste of what you’ll get if you don’t lead us to that ranch. Tomorrow. Understand?”
“Sure, jefe.” Splitface put a hand to his head. “We get there tomorrow, you bet.”
“That’s it, Hyrum,” Nephi said. “Show him who’s boss.”
They fed the stock what little grass remained and ate jerky and hardtack themselves. One cottage was still relatively intact and Rulon had the rare privilege of a roof over his head for the night. Obadiah woke him before dawn.
“You hiding? Didn’t like Pa showing your pal Splitface who’s in charge?”
“I don’t like any of this, Obadiah. I told you at the start.”
They drank coffee and ate johnnycakes and the rest of the mule meat, saddled their mounts, and rode southeast. Splitface led them along the shoulder of an old highway. The horses had trouble making their way along the soft gravel shoulder, much eroded by the wind. Nephi’s mount stumbled and almost fell.
“I ought to shoot your Gentile slave, Hyrum.”
“Be quiet. Everyone stop. I smell smoke.”
They reined in their mounts. Countrymen with keen senses of smell, they inhaled the faint tang of wood smoke, a sign of nearby human habitation.
“Just like you say, jefe,” Splitface said. “Today we find the ranch.”
“Count your chickens when they hatch. I’ll go look with you. Rulon, you got sharp eyes, so come along. Nephi, Parley, Obadiah, stay here. Keep the stock back and quiet.”
Hyrum made them dismount. He had Splitface walk ahead and kept his shotgun on the slave’s back. After a short distance, when the smoke grew strong. Hyrum murmured, “Tether your horses.”
Crouched low, they crept to the edge of a wide arroyo from which twin streams of white smoke spiraled upward. In the gray, predawn light, two small shacks made from adobe and plywood huddled close to a muddy creek. There was a flicker of firelight from a solitary window in one shack and the sound of a woman’s voice raised in song from the other one.
“Stay low.”
They lay flat behind rocks. Hyrum handed a folding telescope to Rulon. He put the telescope to one eye. The sun had just crested the horizon. Down below, two men emerged from the shacks, dark as Splitface, but whole featured. They took hoes and worked on gardens irrigated with creek water. They tilled tomatoes, corn, and beans. A woman stepped out of one shack. Young and slender. She squatted to grind corn on a flat stone.
“It’s a farm.”
“Give me that scope.”
Hyrum studied the laboring men. He handed the telescope to Splitface.
“Tell us if that’s it.”
“Sure, jefe. That’s Paco and Antonio. The chica, she Manuela.”
“Let’s go back.”
Slowly so as to make no noise, they walked back. Parley had broken open his shotgun and was oiling the barrel. Nephi leaned against a rock, rifle at port arms.
“Pa, what’d you find?”
“Hush, Obadiah. Come here, all of
you.”
They gathered round, heads bent conspiratorially low.
“It’s the place all right. Near the Albikerk by water, like Splitface said.”
“This ain’t the place, Pa.”
Hyrum glared sharply at Rulon, blue eyes full of the baleful rage that terrified the boy.
“Did you sass me, boy?”
Rulon had blurted out the truth. Now there was no retreat.
“I ain’t trying to sass you, Pa, but this can’t be it. He said there was a ranch in a box canyon with a spring and this is a farm in a gully with a creek. And where’s all the stock? He’s telling a story, Pa.”
“Rulon, hush. I ’preciate what you done for the family, but you forget your place. I’m still head of this family and I make the decisions.”
“You obey your father, boy,” Nephi said. “Shame on you. Sticking up for Lamanite trash against your own.”
“But—”
“Hush up, Rulon.” Obadiah punched Rulon in the stomach, a blow that doubled him over.
“Stop that, Obadiah. Rulon, if you’re scared, you watch Splitface, Me and the rest will ride down and ask some questions.”
Hyrum and the others rode out at a loud, clattering trot, without pretence of stealth, firearms ready. Splitface helped Rulon sit down in the shadow cast by a rock and gave him water.
“You hermano, he mean as you padre.”
“They’re Allreds and that’s it.”
“Sure, kid, sure.”
In the full light of dawn, the day’s heat steadily grew. The sky was a light blue dome scarred by fuzzy patches of clouds in her upper reaches. They rested in the shade. Rulon was startled and delighted by a dove’s coo, drawn by scarce water.
“Is pretty, huh, kid?
BDAM BANG BLAM
Startled by the gunfire, Rulon stood up and ran a few steps toward the gully.
“What did they do?”
Hooves clattered behind him. Rulon turned to see Splitface astride a horse, riding away at a gallop.
“Manolo, stop.”
But Splitface kept riding. Rulon shouldered his AK-47, sighted down the barrel, and shot him in the back. Splitface pitched off the horse to the ground. Thoroughly spooked, the horse kept running. Rulon hurried over to him. Splitface lay on his back. A pool of black blood steadily spread in the dust around him. He laughed, an awful gurgle, and a blood bubble popped from the gaping hole in his face.
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